the unofficial start to President Obama\u2019s second term<\/a> as President of the United States.<\/p>\nIt goes without saying that there are just about as many people upset about today\u2019s festivities as there are those chanting \u201cfour more years.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have a long standing tradition in the United States of being critical of the President. It\u2019s been going on since the dawn of the country and probably won\u2019t be ending any time soon.<\/p>\n
But what if it did?<\/p>\n
At least for Christians.<\/p>\n
What if for these next four years we as Christians pulled back from all the rhetoric and instead invested that energy into proclaiming good news?<\/p>\n
What if we took seriously our call to pray for the President and stopped pretending like he was the anti-Christ?<\/p>\n
What if we stopped placing our hope for the future in the passage of legislation and instead lived as if we believed we really are citizens of a different kingdom?<\/p>\n
What if instead of defending our right to violence, we found the courage to wage peace?<\/p>\n
What if we allowed the person on the other side of the aisle to be a person instead of our soulless enemy?<\/p>\n
What if helping others in need, regardless of their circumstances, was something we stopped arguing about and, instead, became something we started taking as seriously as Jesus did?<\/p>\n
What if the alien among us became someone to defend and care for, rather than a economic threat?<\/p>\n
What if for Christians social media became a place to share words of hope, rather than an arena for destroying our political adversaries?<\/p>\n
What if the church was\u00a0a place of hope, compassion, and unity\u00a0for the nation, rather than a source of division?<\/p>\n
What if we had the audacity to allow the the Gospel to take precedence over the Constitution?<\/p>\n
What if we put to rest being \u201cDemocratic Christians\u201d or \u201cRepublican Christians\u201d and, instead, for the next four years we were simply \u201cChristians.\u201d<\/p>\n
What would happen?<\/p>\n
To be honest, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
But I have to imagine that if we decided to put more energy into being authentic Christians rather than de facto politicians, then four years from now the world would be a much better place than it is today.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grace and peace,<\/p>\n
Zack Hunt<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today officially marks the unofficial start to President Obama\u2019s second term as President of the United States. It goes without saying that there are just about as many people upset about today\u2019s festivities as there are those chanting \u201cfour more years.\u201d We have a long standing tradition in the United States of being critical of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3437,"featured_media":8830,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n